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Earlier this week oil closed above $100 a barrel for the first time. To make matters worse, wholesale gasoline and heating oil jumped 11 cents a gallon in a single day to their all-time highs. A lot of bad news triggered the increase of nearly $14 a barrel in the last two weeks. A 70,000 b/d refinery in Texas blew up and may take months to repair; floods, snowstorms, and power outages have the world’s coal markets breaking records; and to top it off OPEC is threatening to cut oil production, either officially or unofficially, because OECD stockpiles crept up a bit in January. When you can get $100 for every barrel exported you might as well save some for the grandchildren, because you sure don’t need the money.

Then there is the economic news. Last week, a Harvard economist opined to an energy conference in Texas that when we are through tallying up the credit crunch losses from real estate loans, car loans, credit card loans, and business loans all going bad at the same time, the total will be over $1 trillion. Now this is just an abstract figure until you learn that the total capitalization of all the banks in America is about $1 trillion...[Read More]

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All is vanity

Last edited by BailOut : 02-21-2008 at 12:12 PM.
Reason: Corrected a typo in the title.

Some are skeptical, however. If you have noticed the all-time high prices of agricultural commodities lately, you will realize that mandating the conversion of a significant portion of our corn crop into motor fuel is one of the worst laws the US Congress has ever passed. However, don’t worry, for within a year or so, all those voters who eat will bring them to their senses so that mandates and prices subsidies for corn-based ethanol will be eliminated.

The downside of this collective denial is the loss of time to effect change. So far the only decisive action in the US was to turn our corn into SUV fuel. Much more needs to be done. It is looking more and more as if we are going to go over a cliff, while buying nearly unaffordable food and waiting in lines at the gas pumps before meaningful action is taken.

Wow! Here's a new body uncovered. The "credit default swap". The article article says that this "insurance against bad debt" has a value of 45 trillion, 45 times the "total capitalization of all the banks in America (about $1 trillion). It goes on to say that;

"If these credit default swaps start going bad and somebody is liable for even a tiny fraction of their supposed value, there is not enough money in China or all the sovereign wealth funds in the world, or the US Treasury to bail this out".

He goes on to say that the "downside of this collective denial is the loss of time to effect change".

Time is running out. What should we do???

From what I hear there is only one presidential candidate who says he will try to address the problems we face, especially what I feel to be the biggest problem, special interest groups and lobbying. He will defenitely have an uphill battle there. Actually, it will more resemble scalling Everest! Those now making windfall profits are not going to take kindly to anyone comming into office and telling them they must now "cease and desist". They are not above the use of "anything necessary", anything, to "keep the big bucks rolling" into their coffers.